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Tips & Tricks
The PRSS Account Management Office, staffed by Earl Johnson and Megan Williams, has received numerous inquiries lately from station personnel on how to run decoder usage reports. These are reports that will provide you with a list of scheduled transmission times of programs you’ve subscribed to along with their associated decoder/port assignments. This can be very helpful when planning or scheduling new and/or current shows and to ensure your decoders are not double-booked.
To run a report, please follow these steps:
- Log into the ContentDepot portal with your station user name and password
- On the left-hand navigation bar, under “Tools,” select “Reports”
- Select the option at the bottom called “Station Decoder Usage Report”
- Select your preferred export format, whether it be html, pdf, xls or rtf
- Click ‘Create Report’
- Select your preferred date range that you wish the report to encompass, and then click ‘Submit’
- Confirm your request by clicking ‘Generate Report’
Fall is a great time to do some weeding to keep your ContentDepot programs in order. A few simple activities will make it easier for stations to locate your active programs in the ContentDepot and will make sure all the information in the system is as current as possible. For details and instructions, click here.
If you are a station or producer administrator in the ContentDepot, this is also a great time to verify that your user accounts are up-to-date. Please take a few minutes to check your list of active contacts in the ContentDepot portal to make sure that the right people have access to the system. For help on how to check your contact list, click here.
Please contact the PRSS Help Desk at prsshelp@npr.org or 800.971.7677 if you require any assistance.
As the holiday season approaches, the PRSS has come up with some tips to make sure that stations receive your special programming in an automated fashion. We also have suggestions for station personnel to ensure holiday programming is available when needed. To read, please click here.
The fall solar outage season is upon us! A solar or sun transit outage is an electromagnetic phenomenon where a station downlink is temporarily unable to receive a satellite signal due to interference from the sun as it passes behind the satellite. Solar outages occur on a predictable schedule and affect downlinks in the US for about five consecutive days, for as much as six minutes a day, twice each year.
The 2009 fall solar outage season will begin September 28 and last through October 15. We encourage stations and producers to take the following steps in preparation for solar outages in your region:
Producers: Program producers of episodes scheduled to transmit during the outage season are encouraged to make sure their content is loaded on a timely basis. Posting evergreen episodes of live programs will give stations programming options during the outages in their regions.
Stations: Stations should consider their operational requirements during the predicted outage duration in your area and download content as provided by program producers.
For a complete schedule of predicted solar outages across the United States, please click here.
The upcoming transition from daylight-saving time (DST) to standard time will occur on Nov. 1, 2009. This change may impact your ContentDepot schedule.
The most important action stations can take is to make sure that their local production systems (including time-of-day displays) have the latest updates so that they'll properly step back on Nov. 1. Stations should also check with their automation/playback system vendor to see if there are any special scheduling considerations for their particular installation.
For more information about the time switch, including technical and operational notes about handling the transition to standard time, please click here.
If you require additional assistance, the PRSS Help Desk is available by telephone at 800.971.7677, or via email: prsshelp@npr.org
Gaining Insight Into Program Subscriptions
Producers can wonder no longer about which stations are picking up their programs, thanks to a new reporting feature in ContentDepot. The Program Subscription Report provides producers with a list of stations currently subscribed to their programs, and it includes the start date of the subscription and the schedule when each station has indicated it will air the program.
The feature became available earlier this year as part of the ContentDepot software upgrade in February. It was designed in coordination with the PRSS advisory group, created to address producer reporting needs.
This report can be run by any producer who has permission to run reports in ContentDepot. Users can pull a report at any time, and it will always provide an up-to-date listing of currently subscribed stations.
To run the report:
- Log into ContentDepot
- Navigate to Tools, and then to Reports
- Select the Program Subscription Report option and select the format and programs for which you would like information
- Export the file into html, pdf, rtf and/or xls formats
Message-Forwarding to Handhelds Just Got Easier
Station personnel that want to have PRSS messages on ContentDepot and other related operations forwarded to cell phones and other handheld devices should be aware that the Message Classification System has been modified to make it easier to do this.
Beginning on July 27, 2009, all system messages sent from the PRSS will include one of the following three slugs in the subject field:
- IMPAIRMENT – for incidents affecting the delivery of individual program transmissions
- PROGRAM DISCREPANCY – for incidents affecting program content that may impact a subscribing station
- CD ALERT – for major technical incidents affecting the entire ContentDepot system.
Users of portable communications devices should be able to use these slugs as keywords to forward messages to them directly. If you have any questions about the Message Classification System, please contact the PRSS Help Desk at 800.971.7677 or prsshelp@npr.org.
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